New Ghostcrawler Blog: Cataclysm Talent Tree Post-Mortem

Ghostcrawler's back after a hiatus from posting his developer blogs and this time he wants to talk talent trees. A lot of us aren't a big fan of the new trees, especially because it feels foreign to take an entire tree without looking up; frequently a good spec boils down to a cookie cutter spec with 1-2 points in a different ability or two.

Then again, cookie cutters were always popular--even in vanilla. Cataclysm just streamlined them. All in all, this is an excellent post-mortem into why Blizzard changed talents and how they feel about it currently, even if the system has its detractors. It's also a good examination into mastery and early leveling as well as endgame goals.

You may have noticed we changed class talent trees for Cataclysm. We changed not just the trees themselves, as you might expect for an expansion, but the entire structure of the trees and the way you choose talents. Now that the Cataclysm model has been in play for several months, the team has been discussing what we like and don\u2019t like about it, and I thought that might be of interest to some of you. As always with this series, this is design rumination, not a list of upcoming changes.

What Worked Well

The talent trees are simpler now, but without losing a lot of depth. Most of what we cut were passive talents that everyone took anyway, or really lame talents that did nothing. Choosing your specialization at level 10 and not having to delay playing your character the way you want feels great. You can play your shaman as Elemental or Enhancement with the tools and bonuses to make either work. Specs within a class feel different. This was a big challenge for the DPS warriors, warlocks, hunters, and rogues in particular. Nowadays those specs have different rotations, different strengths and utility, and a different flavor overall. Mastery integrates into the trees well. We can delay the complexity until higher level, and we\u2019re at the point now where it\u2019s a competitive stat for many specs (though to be fair, not all yet). There are some legitimate hard choices for many of the specs. Usually these come in two varieties: which talent you want before you can advance to the next tier of the tree, or where you want to spend those remaining talents after you\u2019ve hit the bottom of the tree. At the risk of catching flak for this statement, I feel that the game is as balanced as it\u2019s ever been. When you look back at the vanilla or Burning Crusade days there were many specs that were just jokes and the difference between the highest performing and worst performing specs was on the order of 30-50% or more. Nowadays, players worry about 5-10% differences. Those are differences we still want to fix, absolutely, but we\u2019ve come a long way. The talent trees have helped us do that.

What Didn\u2019t Work

I\u2019ll admit there are still a few clunker talents -- those that are undertuned or just not interesting enough. There aren\u2019t many though, and they\u2019re relatively easy to replace. On the other hand, the talent trees still have traps for the unwary. For example, a Fury build that skips over Raging Blow is making a serious mistake. That may seem obvious to current players but it\u2019s the kind of thing someone returning to the game after a hiatus might not understand immediately. (After all, you didn\u2019t robotically take Ghostly Strike just because it was a gold medal ability.) While there is something to be said for safe choices, it would also be nice if the talents we expected players to have were talents they always had. Some players miss true hybrid builds. (Hybrid in this context means spending near evenly in two trees -- I\u2019m not talking about the more common use of \u201chybrid\u201d as a tank or healing class.) To be fair, these builds were either not very competitive or were just cherry picking a few powerful talents in order to create something that was likely overpowered, especially in PvP. In other words, the reality of the hybrid build never lived up to the myth. But it\u2019s fair to say that it\u2019s impossible now to have a hybrid build, and we understand some players want them back. I said above that there are tough choices within the trees of many specs, but there aren\u2019t very many of them within each spec. Often it can come down to where to spend those last 1-3 talent points. While that was our goal, it would be even more exciting if there were more of those hard decisions. Hard decisions can be painful when you\u2019re faced with excluding an ability or mechanic that\u2019s fun to have. But overall we think hard, exclusive decisions are a good thing. They encourage experimentation and discussion and give players a chance to try out different things, all of which can help keep them engaged. Even worse, one potential place to spend those points is in the first two tiers of the other trees of your class, yet those talents are extremely design-constrained. First, they have to be attractive to the main spec using that tree, so chances are you\u2019re not going to find much interest in the healing tree if you\u2019re a damage dealer (unless you want to improve your limited healing). Second, those top-tier talents can\u2019t affect higher level abilities since the talents are available at level 10. Finally, because those talents are available early, they should really be relatively simple to understand for new or returning players. You don\u2019t want to put complex procs with lots of exceptions and internal cooldowns that high in the tree. All of those reasons mean that it\u2019s rare that there\u2019s a true game-changing talent available in those first two tiers. This would be totally broken, but imagine you could spend those last 10 points anywhere in another tree. Much more exciting, huh? This is a personal pet peeve, but I don\u2019t like the talents that have a 33\/66\/100% chance to do what you want them to do. That\u2019s just an awkward way of making a valuable talent cost more than one point. The new Cataclysm talent tree design didn\u2019t cause this problem, but it didn\u2019t fix it either.

The Future

This is the part where I\u2019d really love to share our ideas for how we could address these problems, but some discussions are still a little too rough even for the dev watercooler. When we\u2019re a little farther along, we\u2019ll be able to share more. In the meantime, this is a great topic for further discussion. Players like to evaluate the talents in their particular class, but it\u2019s also useful to evaluate the talent tree system as a whole. It\u2019s an iconic design for World of Warcraft for sure, but that doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t be improved.

Greg \u201cGhostcrawler\u201d Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. He once spent a summer capturing live radioactive alligators. True story.

Comentários

Comentado por Porcell

on 2011-06-01T15:10:06-05:00

Yeah but now go to talent calculator and start doing rogue combat spec ... you have to spend points to talents which are not interesting for PvE combat rogue in order to progress to next tier.\rAnd its the same as with wotlk ... after you will spend your talents in combat tree, you will spend 9 in assassination and 1 in subtlety because there is no other good build for that ... in other words LACK OF CHOICES\r\rSo building my combat rogue, in order to get to 0\/31\/0 you need to spend 4 talent points on optional talents.\r\r2\/2 Imp Recuperate to increase my self healing and have a mini-damage reduction CD\r2\/2 Imp Sprint if I want a more PvP talent to break roots, \r2\/2 Imp Kick to put a 2 second silence on kick, \r2\/2 Gouge to reduce energy cost and increase stun, \r2\/2 Improved Armor from leather\r2\/2 Blade Twisting to put a passive movement slow on your attacks.\r2\/2 Throwing Spec to put an interrupt on your throw and increase range.\r\rThat's a LOT of choices, a lot of utility.\r\rOnce you are done with your 31, 3\/3 in Lethality and 3\/3 Coup De Grace are pretty much mandatory, and your last 4 points are a choice between Ruthlessness and Relentless Strikes (which I'm sure people have done the math on and concluded that Ruthlessness is the "better" skill).\r\rSo you have 4 talent points to spend in 7 different talents, and it's totally up to you which to choose, AND you can't be wrong.

Comentado por ExDementia

on 2011-06-01T15:18:17-05:00

ghostcrawler should just stop posting altogether.

Please, add nothing to the argument. No reasons why or anything. The way you're posting now is much more helpful to the discussion!

Interest, can you help me out here, buddy?

Well.

Entitled people are entitled and elitist people are elitist. In short, people think they can develop the game better but instead of actually suggesting ideas they just flame the devs\/blues\/CMs

Thanks, pal!

Comentado por xaratherus

on 2011-06-01T15:21:39-05:00

ghostcrawler should just stop posting altogether.\r\rPlease, add nothing to the argument. No reasons why or anything. The way you're posting now is much more helpful to the discussion!\r\rI was going to say something about this, but well - *shrug*. I've sort of gotten used to those sorts of 'non-posts' by certain users.

Comentado por Interest

on 2011-06-01T15:55:46-05:00

ghostcrawler should just stop posting altogether.

Please, add nothing to the argument. No reasons why or anything. The way you're posting now is much more helpful to the discussion!

Interest, can you help me out here, buddy?

Well.

Entitled people are entitled and elitist people are elitist. In short, people think they can develop the game better but instead of actually suggesting ideas they just flame the devs\/blues\/CMs

Thanks, pal!

I was going to say something in response to him, but what's the point? I mean, look at his post history. He's just digging himself a deep pit.

Comentado por Monday

on 2011-06-01T16:33:19-05:00

I'm seriously surprised he's not banned yet, what with the fights he constantly gets into and the spats with the mods\/administrators he's had.

Comentado por ExDementia

on 2011-06-01T16:36:24-05:00

I'm seriously surprised he's not banned yet, what with the fights he constantly gets into and the spats with the mods\/administrators he's had.\r\rIt's because he is so well connected with Google. The mods are afraid of him.\r\r(Hell, even I have a Gmail account. He controls our lives!)

Comentado por Interest

on 2011-06-01T17:16:07-05:00

I'm seriously surprised he's not banned yet, what with the fights he constantly gets into and the spats with the mods\/administrators he's had.

I wouldn't know, but we're getting off topic.

Comentado por chaosultimamage

on 2011-06-01T17:18:41-05:00

http:\/\/ptr.wowhead.com\/talent#fcIZcGcfRc0RGo0o\rThis is only reasonable build for PvE combat rogue\r\rStrange, that's not the same PvE combat rogue spec that's recommended in the rogue forums or the one that I and many other rogues use - including some in the top 5 raiding guilds in the US. (Note: I am NOT a combat rogue in a top 5 raiding guild.) \r\rThere are obvious abilities in the combat tree, but the abilities in the other trees to supplement it are another story. You just picked things that said "you do more damage" without understanding mechanics. \r\rRelentless Strikes, for instance, is an amazing utility for combat rogues, because we miss out on Assassin's Resolve from being Assassination. \r\rAnyway, back on topic. I generally dislike reading Ghostcrawlers blogs as well, mainly because it's the same crap we always hear from Blizzard. "It's too difficult to do" or "We would like to do it, but we're not going to" or "We did that and it turns out we don't really like it". It's no different in their Q&As and no different in interviews. If Blizzard wants this game to keep up with the times, they need to put in some major work to fix these things. It's obvious from everything Blizzard has said for the last few years that they have no clue what we, the players, want. (I suppose most of us don't know what we want either, though)

Comentado por Porcell

on 2011-06-01T17:50:46-05:00

Anyway, back on topic. I generally dislike reading Ghostcrawlers blogs as well, mainly because it's the same crap we always hear from Blizzard. "It's too difficult to do" or "We would like to do it, but we're not going to" or "We did that and it turns out we don't really like it". It's no different in their Q&As and no different in interviews. If Blizzard wants this game to keep up with the times, they need to put in some major work to fix these things. It's obvious from everything Blizzard has said for the last few years that they have no clue what we, the players, want. (I suppose most of us don't know what we want either, though)\r\rYou are like Oscar Rogers from SNL.\r\rhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sKFRSL4wpcY\r\rIt's obvious from everything I've read over the last years that the players have no clue what they want. They just like screaming "FIX IT." Fix what? "IT! FIX! IT!"\r\rJust... just stop. They are the professional game company, they are the professional game designers, and this game is pretty @#$%ing fantastic. Hundreds of dopes on forums thinking they can arm-chair develop WoW better than anyone else is annoying.\r\rGhostcrawler posting this blog about some of the stuff Developers go through and their thought processes, it's a nice thing to let players get insight on. And what is the response? "Put in some major work to fix these things!" Well, isn't that helpful.

Comentado por Cambo

on 2011-06-01T18:07:53-05:00

They are the professional game company, they are the professional game designers, and this game is pretty @#$%ing fantastic. Hundreds of dopes on forums thinking they can arm-chair develop WoW better than anyone else is annoying.\r\rGhostcrawler posting this blog about some of the stuff Developers go through and their thought processes, it's a nice thing to let players get insight on. And what is the response? "Put in some major work to fix these things!" Well, isn't that helpful.\r\rIf I ever meet you in real life, I shall buy you a beer.\rWoW players are extremely spoiled. Not many other developers make so much effort to be so open with the community.

Comentado por Interest

on 2011-06-01T18:25:18-05:00

Anyway, back on topic. I generally dislike reading Ghostcrawlers blogs as well, mainly because it's the same crap we always hear from Blizzard. "It's too difficult to do" or "We would like to do it, but we're not going to" or "We did that and it turns out we don't really like it". It's no different in their Q&As and no different in interviews. If Blizzard wants this game to keep up with the times, they need to put in some major work to fix these things. It's obvious from everything Blizzard has said for the last few years that they have no clue what we, the players, want. (I suppose most of us don't know what we want either, though)\r\rYou are like Oscar Rogers from SNL.\r\rhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sKFRSL4wpcY\r\rIt's obvious from everything I've read over the last years that the players have no clue what they want. They just like screaming "FIX IT." Fix what? "IT! FIX! IT!"\r\rJust... just stop. They are the professional game company, they are the professional game designers, and this game is pretty @#$%ing fantastic. Hundreds of dopes on forums thinking they can arm-chair develop WoW better than anyone else is annoying.\r\rGhostcrawler posting this blog about some of the stuff Developers go through and their thought processes, it's a nice thing to let players get insight on. And what is the response? "Put in some major work to fix these things!" Well, isn't that helpful.\rYou need to read my spoiler tags more =PPP

Comentado por Monday

on 2011-06-01T18:43:20-05:00

They are the professional game company, they are the professional game designers, and this game is pretty @#$%ing fantastic. Hundreds of dopes on forums thinking they can arm-chair develop WoW better than anyone else is annoying.\r\rGhostcrawler posting this blog about some of the stuff Developers go through and their thought processes, it's a nice thing to let players get insight on. And what is the response? "Put in some major work to fix these things!" Well, isn't that helpful.\r\rIf I ever meet you in real life, I shall buy you a beer.\rWoW players are extremely spoiled. Not many other developers make so much effort to be so open with the community.\r\rQFT\r\rExcept I wouldn't buy you a beer. Maybe a Mountain Dew.

Comentado por BeefiusMaximus

on 2011-06-01T20:20:09-05:00

I am frequently amazed at how some posters can fixate on a game feature like 'path of the titans' as though it were the second coming of Christ, when it A) never made it out of the conceptual stages of design and B) we were never told anything substantive or detailed about what it would do or how it would work... kind of how some players used to fixate on the absence of 'hero classes' or 'vehicle combat' back in BC... well, we have those things now and they are nothing all that spectacular.\r\rThe talent trees are fine as-is; they give some degree of choice, though there seems to be only one set of good choices depending on whether you are optimizing for PvP, 5-man dungeons or raids. The only glaring flaw seems to be the prime glyphs - the choice you make there is wholly decided by which talent tree you specialized in, with no possible variation... in fact even the minor glyphs seem almost pre-determined, with the major area for variation being in the major glyphs... and the glyph system just doesnt seem distinct enough from talents to merit being a separate thing.\r\rI think that glyphs should probably be more inter-dependant with the talent trees; they would actually serve some purpose if certain glyphs were pre-requisites for certain branches of talents, and\/or vice-versa.

Comentado por atomicwolf22

on 2011-06-01T23:06:53-05:00

Ok so want I get from GC post. Is this.. That were not happy about a few of the current Spec's\/Talents builds and were going to change them with your feed back. And on top of that were tried of all the QQ Topic's\/Post about the current builds.\r\rIs that want others are getting also?\r\rI personally like have the smaller trees vs. the 71 point trees. I personally also think that there should still be a restriction of 21 in order to have the spec name. \r\rI also see alot of pvp talents mixed deep into some builds to wear you can only have one or the other. Which can cause issues with some classes and them being killed to quickly.\r\rNow with this being said. I'll have to look up some of the older builds and talents so that when I go and reply to the post with my suggestions it want be something random that just gets threw up and posted.

Comentado por shao

on 2011-06-02T03:20:10-05:00

I find it funny when a community of game players like to think they understand the complexity of balancing every class talent tree in the game, and when they don't get their way they bash the man that made changes with a personal vengeance. I'm sure ghostcrawler finds it funny too, especially when people make out they hate the man, not changes he's implemented. LOL-worthy.\r\rPersonally, i think the talent changes introduced in 4.x have worked well, and from the class i play i see no major problems. \r\rMaybe, as a non-player i'd like there to be more utility based talents that are designed purely for PvP, but would be my only criticism.

Comentado por Sweetscot

on 2011-06-02T03:46:17-05:00

I don't dislike reading Ghostcrawler blogs\/posts for his work, I find his writing style to be annoying and I think he has a head the size of 3 city blocks. He comes off as wussified and arrogant at the same time. I really can't think of a recently implemented change that he had anything to do with that upsets me. I would just abstain from reading things by him except that they are usually pretty important or are mixed in with other news so it's hard to miss. I certainly don't hate him on a personal level, I just hate reading his crud and need to get better at making myself skip it :)

Now if you want to talk real hatred, there is a blue that I would love to see put in a dunk tank and fired from Blizzard but Ghostcrawler isn't it. I can somewhat agree that Blizz might truly be better off using a good pr writer rather than have him write stuff himself...if that is the work of a pr writer they need a better one.

Edit: To be on topic -

While I definitely understand some peoples frustrations with the short trees I think they will be much better in the long run, there is probably some room for improvement but I don't envy the team that has to balance those puppies. I think it's important to remember that it isn't just 1 man who does that which is a good thing because that is a very big job.

I like that key spells are given "free" when you take the spec, I think maybe one solution rather than allowing people to take points anywhere would be to make the trees more of a pyramid with wider top 2 tiers, providing more options to those picking out-of-main-tree talents -or- to remove the "must have x points in tree y" requirement on some talents if the tree is not your main tree (but not all talents just ones that might be useful)

The reason being is that while I understand the "idiot proof"ness thing upsets some people I could see giving new players free reign to chose any talent outside their main tree once they fill it being very very confusing and leading us back to the path of "you must look up spec that someone else has theorycrafted the snot out of to have the 'right' spec" and I think that that path was inferior to the current one where anyone who reads the talents and thinks about them will almost certainly get it right or at least close enough.

Comentado por MeesterCat

on 2011-06-02T04:53:11-05:00

Speaking as a Holy Paladin, I'm very impressed with how the talent trees worked out.\r\rWhile there are some mandatory talents, and while a min\/maxed tree can be created, the choices are there and do allow you some flexibility.\r\rFor instance do I buff WoG but lose some of the positional flexibilty of having longer ranged Judgements? Do I invest in Pursuit of Justice to help with positioning again and possible Holy Power generation, but at the expense of other Holy Power generating talents or shorter cooldowns. \r\rI do feel sorry for GC too. Knowing that whatever he posts will be bashed, but if he doesn't post anything he will be bashed too. I think part of the problem is that the Dev blogs often keep things vague. I can see the reason for this, but I think we would be seeing a lot more in depth articles and comments if WoW wasn't the market leader - EVE's devs go into *a lot* of detail about gameplay, technological and social matters for that game and a lot of it is really, good interesting stuff*, ( http:\/\/www.eveonline.com\/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=900 & http:\/\/www.eveonline.com\/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=840 for example ) While such things might not be completely suited to WoW, more in depth analysis and less speculation might encourage a more respectful tone from the Community, or at the very least, distract everyone with bar charts.\r\r* I guess they don't have shareholders to worry about though.

Comentado por Jesara

on 2011-06-02T15:50:28-05:00

currently I am mostly annoyed with talents in a tree that buff a particular spell that they continually nerf (for only that spec) and state that it is because they want to discourage using it.\rPrimary example would be Word of Glory for prot paladins, 3 talents in the prot tree buffing it, but holy and ret get to reduce\/remove the cooldown and prot is stuck with a nerfed-in 20 sec cd on the only heal that is safe to use while soloing or tanking.\r\rSo we have design saying "don't use this" and talents saying "this is really good and important for your build, you want to use it"

Comentado por MrSCH

on 2011-06-02T18:18:49-05:00

http:\/\/ptr.wowhead.com\/talent#fcIZcGcfRc0RGo0o\rThis is only reasonable build for PvE combat rogue\r\rI don't see what would be wrong with that tbh.

Comentado por Interest

on 2011-06-02T21:55:53-05:00

http:\/\/ptr.wowhead.com\/talent#fcIZcGcfRc0RGo0o\rThis is only reasonable build for PvE combat rogue\r\rI don't see what would be wrong with that tbh.\r\rWell you should take Relentless Strikes *shrug*. Nothing wrong besides that.